Tag: Carter Page

It is NOT NORMAL for the administration to refuse to impose sanctions on Russia that were implemented in Congressional legislation that passed 517 – 5 in July.

Is it NOT NORMAL the the House Intelligence Committee released a one-sided, cherry-picked memo about the FISA surveillance of a 2016 presidential campaign adviser for.

It is NOT NORMAL that members of the majority party continue to smear non-political leaders of the CIA and the FBI who have worked under presidents of both major parties for what appear to be purely partisan reasons. It is NOT NORMAL for one representative to argue that four non-political appointees in the Justice Department should be prosecuted for treason. (Among other things, this effectively demonstrates that this particular representative does not understand the legal definition of treason.)

It is NOT NORMAL for someone who has described himself as an informal adviser to the Kremlin to play an important role in a presidential campaign.

It is NOT NORMAL for the Pentagon to worry that giving the president too many options on military intervention in North Korea would cause him to start a war. It is NOT NORMAL for a member of the National Security Council to note, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, that a “limited strike on the North might help in the midterm elections.”

The presidential Twitter feed continues to be NOT NORMAL. To be specific, this week it was NOT NORMAL for the president to

state that his first State of the Union address was the most watched in history (it wasn’t);

attempt to negotiate a DACA deal by yelling at the minority party’s Congressional leaders over social media;

approvingly quote flattering stories about him in conservative press;

claim that the infamous memo “totally vindicates” him (it doesn’t);

randomly insult the National Health Service in the UK, prompting a response from the British prime minister (I assume this was due to a story on Fox and Friends);

refer to a congressman who was critical of the memo and the trashing of the FBI as “Little” and say he was “desperate to run for higher office,” while simultaneously insulting four former leaders of the CIA and the FBI; and

call the author of the memo “a man of tremendous courage and grit” and “a Great American Hero.”

It is NOT NORMAL for a member of Congress to write a memo based on classified information from the Justice Department, tease it repeatedly in public, and then refuse to show the memo to either the Justice Department or Senators from his own party. It is NOT NORMAL for the president to call for the public release of the memo despite objections from the Justice Department. And it is NOT NORMAL for an administration to target a Deputy Attorney General from its own party because he is suspected of not being personally loyal to the president.